I downloaded and burned a VL6 light CD, which works - the graphics are fine. So this morning I decided to install VL6 onto my hard drive, started the vlliveinstaller app and went through all the requst boxes. VL6 then installed itself and on start up everything seems fine until it gets to the point where it says, "Going to miltiuser GUI mode" - then the hard drive light flashes for a while and the screen goes totally black. The keyboard and touchpad have no effect, but if I press the on/off power button the screen clears to a blue screen that announces shutting down the relevant stages and then powers down.

Any ideas what I'm doing wrong or aren't doing? Many thanks in advance for your help.

Sounds like it could be a video driver issue. The live discs aren't the best way to install a system though. You might or might not have better luck using the installer cd for VL6 light. There's also a pre-release of Light for VL7, only avail as live-installer currently.

You could try selecting "TUI" at your bootloader and logging in as root. Then you can reconfigure video settings from vasm.

Many thanks for the excellent help and advice. Those videos are great. I've now managed to get the graphics working on my installation, but am having some problems with lilo. When I posted my first post above, the laptop started with a VL splash screen, saying how far it was into its boot sequence (until it crashed) - but now I've just got lines and lines of text, then a huge (too big) log in box. The log on box user name entry works fine, but the password isn't displayed as dots or stars when it is entered. Nothing appears on-screen when entering the password, but it still works. Is that normal? VL then launches properly, with a 1024 x 768 screen in 24 bit colour. Great, thanks guys.

I've tried selecting the linux-tui and linux-gui options in lilo, as well as the linux option - and I've tried selecting different bootsplash screeens, but I get:

"Cannot install * - skipped" and "Sorry, but the attempt to install Lilo has returned an error ... Default image doesn't exist"

So I only get one option (linix) on booting and then the lines of text on start-up and no bootsplash like I did in the beginning. I've not deleted anything as far as I know.

Any thoughts?

(Also, can anyone recommend an inexpensive Cardbus or USB WLAN adapter here in the UK, that actually works with VL as this ADDON RTL-8185 based Cardbus unit detects my network but refuses to connect. I've been though the tutorial and have tried the wrapper, but nothing seems to work. Can't even log on to unprotected networks. I'll post this on the networking forum too).

Thanks for your help. I've made some progress. Firstly, I was in error in clicking on the options in vliloconf that show the available boot options. I had clicked on the squares to indicate selecting them (because to me that is what the UI seems to indicate) - but now realise that they were already selected and clicking on them deselected them. Putting a big grey raised block beside the option when clicking on it is a poor UI response - counterintuitive. So that's why I had no tui and gui options. They appear as options on my boot menu now. Also, now I've done this properly, the 1024 x 768 bootsplash screen option works. Don't know why, it just does.

I can't post the vliloconf output here as it opened in a separate window, not in the root terminal window. The fourth boot option the computer finds is called '*: Linux*' (without the quotes, but with the asterisks). This always fails with lilo and produces a small output box that says 'Cannot install *: Skipped'. This box stays on-screen for a second or two at most and I couldn't copy it, it disappears with barely enough time to read it.

After the bootsplash screen disappears, the log in screen appears. This looks to be huge - as if in a low resolution. When I type the user name, it appears beside 'Login:' I then have to press return to get to the password box (clicking on it doesn't do anything) and when I type the password no feedback of any kind appears in the password box. Is this normal? It works, I can log in ok, but it seems strange that there's no feedback in the password box - like asterisks or dots to indicate your keypress has been recorded. Also, does the log-in screen have to be so huge?

Thanks for your forbearance - I've only used Ubuntu and Mint before and am normally a Windows user.

The "*: Linux" entry is obviously bogus. If you open /etc/lilo.conf in a text editor you can delete that section. Then run command "lilo" (as root, of course).

It is normal that there's no feedback on the password.

The issue with size of the login screen has to do with video drivers. Don't know how to fix that, but possible workaround: if you configure automatic login you won't see the screen (yes, it's cheating ).